


Let the Right One In

by goodoldfashioned



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward First Times, Booty Calls, Denial of Feelings, Dom/sub Undertones, Drunk Sex, Idiots in Love, Insecurity, M/M, Makeover, Mutual Pining, Quests, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 09:37:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20928092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashioned/pseuds/goodoldfashioned
Summary: Three times Jay let Mike in and one time he didn’t regret it.





	Let the Right One In

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel for my last fic! Thanks to reserves for encouraging me to write it.
> 
> There's an angstier/plottier/more backstory-heavy version of this that is 3x as long that I will post soon as well... it was my original attempt at a prequel that became its own thing, just got too long/too reality-feeling to fit with a verse where the Plinkett marriage was featured.
> 
> This is about the Half in the Baaaaaaaaag characters and their world only!
> 
> **

Jay applied for the job at the VCR repair shop when he was twenty years old, a couple of weeks after dropping out of college. Mike interviewed him for the repair associate position, and in doing so described himself as the shop manager. Jay would find out a few months later that this was a lie. His interview consisted of two questions: do you like beer and how do you respond to authority. 

“What do you mean?” Jay asked. They were in the shop’s back room, and Mike was looking at him in a way that was making him nervous. Mike was an intense kind of guy, right away.

“About which part?” Mike asked.

“Uhh, the authority part?”

“Are you a defiant little smart ass who won’t obey orders. That’s what I’m trying to determine here.” Mike narrowed his eyes at Jay and sat forward a little, drumming his fingers on the clipboard he was holding. “‘Cause you kind of look like one.”

“No, I don’t.” Jay felt himself frowning and tried to make his expression neutral. He wanted this job. It sounded way less boring and demeaning than anything else he’d found, and even this seeming lunatic who was interviewing him was interesting. “I can follow orders,” he said when Mike just stared at him with suspicion. “No problem.”

“What about beer.”

“What about it? I’m from Wisconsin, of course I like beer.”

“You look too skinny for that to be true.” 

“That’s just how I am,” Jay said, and he felt his face get hot. Mike was a big guy who looked like he was in his mid-twenties and also like he’d seen some shit. Jay was not infrequently mistaken for a high schooler. The only shit he had seen was in movies.

“I can’t gain weight,” Jay said, wishing he hadn’t elaborated and boggling at how easily Mike had got him talking about this during a job interview. His smallness was one of his least favorite subjects. “Doesn’t matter what I eat or drink, I just. Stay the same.”

He turned out to be wrong about this. Mike was drinking beer on a level beyond anything Jay had ever attempted before he got the job. Within a year of manning the counter at the shop with Mike, Jay had gained ten pounds that were mostly beer-related. Ten years later, he was still working at the shop and had become roughly on par with Mike, chub-wise. 

He’d also become Mike’s best friend, which had its ups and downs. Mike was somehow a complete asshole and total moron but also Jay’s most trusted confidante and one of the cleverest people Jay had ever met. It didn’t make any sense, but little about their lives did. Every year, Jay expected the repair shop to finally go out of business, their customers having dwindled down to one or two per month, but every day when he showed up for his shifts the lights were still on, and his paychecks had yet to bounce. 

Their paychecks weren’t much and they both lived like college kids, which also contributed to Jay feeling like a dumpy mess, his diet consisting mostly of instant meals from boxes and fast food consumed at the shop with Mike. Once a year or so Mike would suggest they move in together as roommates to save on rent, and every time he did Jay would shrug and mumble some excuse about why he couldn’t break his lease yet. The real reason was that he had developed a gross, stupid, unbreakable habit of jerking off to the thought of Mike fucking him. He felt like Mike would somehow discern this through the walls if they lived together. Even more dangerous was the fact that he liked the idea of being domestic with Mike way too much. He could too easily picture himself sniffing Mike’s towel after he had a shower and other disgusting things. 

He wasn’t sure when it happened, and he wasn’t happy about it. The last person he wanted to be in love with was Mike, who had fucked every woman they knew and had been banned for life from three local bars and a Golden Corral. Mike had a shitty attitude about near everything, ordered Jay around like he was an indentured servant, and got blackout drunk often enough that he thought it was normal to barely remember his own name, but there was nothing more satisfying in life than making him laugh, forcing him to admit that he was wrong about something, or just sitting next to him all day, every day, drinking beer and shooting the shit about movies or whatever else. 

Jay had never been in love before and supposed this was just what it was like. He couldn’t reason it out or get rid of it. Mike looked at him a certain way and something in Jay got knocked over, allowing everything he didn’t want to feel to spill right into him. Most of the time it felt so good that he ended up doing Mike’s bidding before he’d even thought about it, wet-mouthed and waiting for Mike’s next command. It was like being bewitched, only he didn’t believe in magic.

He fully expected nothing to ever come of it. He had some vague idea that in the future, eventually, he’d fix his teeth and his hair and whatever else he could manage to improve and would act like an adult who went out looking for sex rather than a terrified kid who virginally beat off to thoughts of his best friend even beyond his thirtieth birthday. He was content to let the time for self-improvement remain undefined and far off in the distance, even as he increasingly felt like he was doomed to pine sexlessly for the rest of his life. Nobody he’d ever met made him want to humiliate himself in the process of learning how to fuck, except Mike, and Mike didn’t seem like an option until suddenly he did. 

They were at Mike’s apartment, not long after the milestone birthday that officially made Jay a thirty-year-old virgin. He’d never confessed this miserable fact of his life to Mike, but he assumed Mike knew. Mike seemed to have figured out Jay wasn’t interested in women without needing to be told, and they didn’t spend enough time apart for Jay to go out and have a gay old time without him.

“How can you live like this?” Jay asked, standing over the coffee table in Mike’s living room and scowling down at the collection of fast food garbage, junk mail and beer bottles that covered it completely. 

“I just do what comes natural,” Mike said. He picked up the coffee table on one side and tilted it so that all the crap fell onto the floor. “You should try it sometime,” he said when he set the table back down, gesturing for Jay to put the pizza box he was carrying onto it.

“Ugh,” Jay said. “No, thanks. I can’t eat with all your garbage piled there, can you please get a trash bag?”

Mike gave Jay a look. It was rare that Jay told him to do something. Jay had paid for the pizza, so he felt like he had the right. 

“Fine,” Mike said. “But you’re helping me clean up, since you’re the princess who can’t eat with a couple of papers and bottles in his presence.” 

“A couple? Jesus, fine, just hurry up. I’m starving.”

Jay put the pizza down and snooped around Mike’s living room while Mike attempted to locate a trash bag in his also-filthy kitchen. There were some VHS tapes stacked up around Mike’s old TV, most of which looked like they’d been stolen from the shop.

“Why do you have this?” Jay asked, holding up a VHS tape of Denise Austin’s Pregnancy Workout when Mike reentered the room. 

“Uhh.” Mike whipped the garbage bag he was holding through the air so it would billow open. “Don’t worry about it. Put that down and come help me.”

“Oh my god,” Jay said, snickering. “Wow. Ew.”

“Ew yourself, you nosy fuck. I can only imagine the kind of nasty shit you beat off to.”

Jay forced an uncomfortable laugh and tried to hide his burning face by bending down to pick up Mike’s garbage. 

“Seriously,” Mike said, clearly sensing an opening. Jay was kneeling on the floor, putting beer bottles into the garbage bag. “What are you into? Since you so rudely helped yourself to my collection.”

“Collection?” Jay made a disgusted face at Mike, exposing his blush in the process. “You’re telling me there’s more?”

“We’re changing the subject to your perversions, Jay. What are they?” Mike nudged Jay with his foot when he didn’t answer. “C’mon. I’ve always wondered.”

“You’ve always _wondered_?” 

Jay snorted and kept his burning face lowered. They’d come from their favorite after work bar and had walked to Mike’s place after sharing several pitchers of beer, picking up the pizza on the way. It was their usual routine, and they would probably polish off another six pack between the two of them before the night was over. Jay knew better than to indulge subjects such as this one when he’d been drinking, especially if he was preparing to do more drinking and if in doing so his only company would be Mike. 

“What?” Mike said when Jay finally peered up at him, still on his knees. “That’s weird to you? That I’ve speculated about what you beat off to?”

“Um, yeah?”

“It’s a valid area of interest, considering your taste in movies.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“A person’s favorite movies are the windows to their soul, Jay. You’ve said so yourself.”

Jay snickered again. It sounded so stupid when Mike repeated it. 

“If I did say that, I was super drunk.”

“Hmm,” Mike said, like this had given him an idea.

They got properly wasted that night. Jay wasn’t sure why he let it happen, except that it was so fun to get sloppy with Mike and talk over each other in half-shouted debates about which of them had the more jackass-ish opinion on whatever. Mike kept bringing refills of some allegedly special bourbon into the living room, and even as Jay moaned about how terribly hungover he’d be in the morning, he kept drinking them. After innumerable beers, he always started to like the taste of whiskey, or anything Mike wanted him to swallow. 

“So, Jay,” Mike said, stretching his arm along the back of the couch so that it almost slid behind where Jay’s head rested. Mike was leaning kind of close, and Jay was drunk enough to let himself enjoy it, laughing too easily at Mike’s dumber remarks. “Where’d we leave off on you and your weird porn?” 

Mike reached over to tug on one of the spiked-up tufts of Jay’s hair after asking.

“Ow,” Jay said, swallowing excess moisture in his mouth when he realized that felt good, too. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. What are you into? You’re so mysterious. You pretend to be all innocent, but I know you’re not.”

“I don’t pretend-- I’m not innocent!”

Mike grinned at that comment in a way that made Jay flush. He hoped it wouldn’t be noticeable, since his face was surely pink already from so much drinking. 

“I have two competing theories,” Mike said, holding two fingers up in Jay’s face. “One is that you’re a germaphobe who’d be all controlling and prudish from start to finish during sex--”

“You’re an idiot,” Jay said, for good measure. He wasn’t sure that Mike was wrong.

“--And the other is that you’d be a filthy little slut who’d lick my boots if I asked you to.”

Jay’s eyes widened. He could see Mike’s booze-addled mind catching up, slowly, to what he’d just said. Mike flinched a little and tried to drink from his glass of bourbon, which was empty.

“Your boots, Mike?” Jay said. “Yours, huh?”

“Fuck you, you know what I mean.” 

“Yeah, I think I’m starting to figure it out.”

Jay had meant that as a joke, but his heart beat faster after he’d said it, mostly because of the answering look Mike gave him. Mike’s eyes were dark in the way they got when he had just latched onto an idea and had decided to try it before he knew how exactly he’d make it work.

“I think I’m starting to figure it out, too,” Mike said, and he reached over to stroke his fingertip down the length of Jay’s nose, tapping him kind of hard against the tip after he had. “Which is bad news for you.” 

“Yeah?” Jay said, breathing faster in a probably-visible way. 

“You have a really straight nose,” Mike said, stroking it again. 

“Um.” Jay swallowed and shifted toward him a little, hoping it was subtle. “What?”

“You ever think about how much time we spend just staring at each other’s faces?”

“You mean-- Talking?”

“Sometimes I tune out what you’re saying and just stare at you.” Mike scooted closer after saying so, his eyes darting around Jay’s face like he was trying to decide what part of it he wanted to weirdly comment on while touching next. 

“That’s fucked up,” Jay said. He could feel himself shrinking down as Mike loomed over him, already flattening himself back for whatever Mike was about to do. 

“Let’s get really fucked up,” Mike said, and he threw his empty glass across the room. It hit the wall and shattered.

“Jesus!” Jay’s shoulders jumped. When he turned back to Mike he was even closer. “Um, what. What do you mean, like. Drink more?”

“Nope. C’mere, you little shit. You look-- I’m sorry, Jay, but I gotta tell you, as a friend. You look like you need to get fucked.” 

Jay opened his mouth to protest and Mike kissed him, shoving his tongue in past Jay’s lips before he could fully process what was happening. Jay’s body responded before his mind could catch up, and without thinking about it he shifted into Mike’s arms so eagerly that he ended up in Mike’s lap, straddling him. 

“Oh fuck yeah,” Mike said, his eyes gleaming when he pulled back to meet Jay’s muggy gaze. “You-- You’re telling me I’m right, huh?” Mike squeezed his arms around Jay a little tighter, like a hug. “Hmm? Tell me, am I right?”

“I don’t know,” Jay said, whining this out like a helpless dork. He was doomed to do this wrong but didn’t even care, as long as Mike did it right, to him. “Mike,” he said, still whiny, and Mike kissed him again, pushing his tongue back into Jay’s mouth like it belonged there. He tasted like bourbon and pinned Jay’s arms tight against his sides while kissing him, like Jay might try to get away. Jay twitched in Mike’s grip, wanting to touch him, and moaned against Mike’s mouth when Mike held him in place easily.

“It’s so weird,” Mike said, breathless when he pulled free again. He was staring up at Jay differently then, and it would take Jay almost ten more years to figure out what that look meant. “I just, I. I don’t even like it when other people sit next to you at the fucking bar.”

“What?” Jay said, only thinking about how hard his dick already was for this, which was embarrassing, though he could feel Mike’s erection against the seat of his ass. 

“You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to own,” Mike said, sounding very drunk. 

“Fuck me like you own me,” Jay said, having no idea what he was asking for. 

The look in Mike’s eyes shifted. Jay heard his breath catch. He could feel Mike’s chest heaving against his own and never wanted to move, except that he also wanted Mike inside him while they both breathed hard and stared at each other like they were about to commit a crime. 

“Go into my bedroom,” Mike said. “There’s a bottle of jerk-off lotion on the side table. Bring it to me.”

“Just come with me and fuck me in the bed,” Jay said, in a begging little voice, testing to see what he could get away with.

Mike seemed to weigh his options. He leaned forward and licked Jay across his lips, pulling free when Jay tried to kiss him. 

“Do as you’re told,” Mike said, pinching Jay on the ass. 

Jay felt the room tilting around him when he climbed off Mike’s lap, more from the disorienting sense of suddenly getting what he’d wanted for so long than from being drunk, though he was pretty fucking drunk, and wanted to collapse face-first onto Mike’s unmade bed and just wait there for Mike to come in and plow him from behind. Maybe he’d also spank Jay on the ass for disobeying him. Jay picked up the lotion bottle and stared down at the bed, considering this bold move, then just hurried back out to do as Mike instructed. 

Walking with visibly tented pants was humiliating, and Jay knew he wasn’t doing anything but drawing more attention to it when he tried to casually hold the bottle of lotion over his crotch as he reentered the living room. When he saw that Mike had already pulled his dick out through the opened fly of his jeans and was stroking himself, with his legs spread obscenely wide and his head tipped back onto the couch as he watched Jay from under hooded eyes, he forgot to care that Mike was going to see the tent in his pants and just stood there like a dummy, open-mouthed and staring. 

“The fuck took you so long?” Mike asked, beckoning for Jay to come closer with the hand that wasn’t casually jacking his dick. 

“Sorry,” Jay said, almost tripping over his own feet as he crossed the room. He came up short when he realized he didn’t know where Mike wanted him: in his lap again, or on his knees between Mike’s legs, mouth open for his cock? Jay had thought about sucking him off in so many different circumstances, so many times. He almost felt shameless enough to ask for it, also near certain that he could not fit that in his mouth. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Mike said, reaching for him. His eyes softened in a way Jay wasn’t sure he liked, but he dropped gladly into Mike’s arms and hid his hot face against Mike’s throat, not sure what he should do with his hands or any other part of himself. “You good?” Mike asked, murmuring this in Jay’s ear. 

“Yes. God. Sorry.”

“You looked a little, uh. I mean. I know it’s big, I’ve had girls tell me to fuck off after they see it--”

“Oh my god.” Jay snickered and sat back to wrinkle his nose at Mike. “You asshole. I’m not afraid of your dick.”

“No?” 

Mike pulled Jay forward so that he was straddling Mike’s lap again, pressing his cock against the bulge of Jay’s. Jay could feel the heat of it even through the denim and his boxers. His dick throbbed for the contact, also for the way Mike’s eyes had darkened again. 

“Okay, Jay,” Mike said, pronouncing Jay’s name the way he sometimes did, like it was a teasing nickname that Mike had invented for him. “Just take it, then. I’m ready, I-- Just take what you want.”

Jay didn’t like this command. He fidgeted in Mike’s grip, humping his dick against Mike’s and biting his bottom lip when it felt so good, already. He wanted to be kissed again, wanted to slobber all over Mike’s cock and feel it dragging hot across his face, also wanted to get Mike inside him as soon as possible. He knew it would hurt. He wanted it to, at least a little. 

“Gonna take these off,” Jay mumbled, looking down to open the button on his jeans. He exhaled with relief when Mike pushed his hands away and did it himself. Jay held his breath when Mike reached in past the waistband of his boxer shorts, and moaned without restraint when Mike’s fingers wrapped around him, his hips already trying to go crazy while Mike did what he could to hold him still with one hand. 

“Holy shit,” Mike said. “This is, uh. I’ve never touched another guy’s dick before.” 

“Congratulations,” Jay said, letting his head fall back and his eyes close. Mike was stroking him like he wasn’t prepared to stop anytime soon, like he was fascinated by this feeling. Jay was ready to come a hundred times in Mike’s hot hand. He would spill over Mike’s fingers until he was emptying dry and bawling from too much stimulation, if that was what Mike wanted.

“Jay,” Mike said, his voice sounding near to breaking. “Fuck,” he said when Jay tipped forward again to meet his eyes, curious. “Look at you, jesus.” 

“What do I look like?” Jay asked, wanting Mike to say it out loud: _slut, you little slut_. It was corny but so good, too, even the idea of that word rolling across the back of Jay’s neck in a way that gave him goosebumps, or maybe it was Mike’s fist pumping his dick that was doing that.

Mike didn’t answer the question except to kiss him. Jay groped for the bottle of lotion while pressing his tongue out to meet Mike’s, sloppy and clueless, laughably out of practice with kissing and totally inexperienced when it came to everything else. Mike didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he liked it, because he kept gripping Jay’s jaw and guiding his kissing efforts, showing him how to be better. 

“Need me to, uh--” Mike swallowed when Jay squeezed some lotion into his palm. “Like. Work you open?”

“No,” Jay said, because he couldn’t deal with the idea of Mike’s fingers inside him. He’d always gone straight to Mike’s dick in his fantasies, whether it was up his ass or in his mouth. “Just, um. Here.”

Jay grabbed for Mike’s cock and slicked it with lotion, trying not to moan for how good it felt to touch him like that, both of them staring down at Jay’s hand, which looked tiny around the insane width of him. Jay bit his lip to hide a grin when Mike moaned softly and shifted his hips up like he wanted more.

“Thought you were taking your pants off,” Mike said, tugging at them. 

“I am.” Jay held up his lotion slicked hand, not sure what to wipe it on. Mike snorted and then looked sorry that he had, like he’d caught himself making fun of Jay’s need for direction. He took Jay’s wrist and pushed up his work shirt so he could clean Jay’s palm with his undershirt, exposing his beer gut in the process. Mike hurried to pull the shirt back down when Jay’s hand was dry, which made Jay want to kiss him again. 

“Take your shirt off, too,” Mike said, as if in response to Jay noticing his insecurity.

“Maybe later,” Jay said, and he slid off of Mike’s lap, hoping to distract him from this disobeyed order by shoving his pants off. He kicked his shoes off in the process, slid his boxers down without letting himself think about it too much, and left his socks on, not sure if that was right or not. He couldn’t think clearly, naked from the waist down and letting Mike look at him. Jay’s face was on fire when Mike glanced up into his eyes. 

“I knew you’d be all creamy,” Mike said, reaching for him.

“Creamy?” Jay said, wrinkling his nose. “Ew.”

“Your legs, you’re like-- mmph, Jay.” Mike pulled Jay back into his lap and mouthed at his neck, somewhere between a kiss and a bite. Jay gasped for how good the little nick of Mike’s teeth felt there. He wanted more, harder, everything, right away. “You’re like a marshmallow,” Mike said, squeezing Jay’s ass in both his hands. 

“Fuck you,” Jay said, pushing Mike’s shoulders back. Was Mike really making fun of him for being fat and pale, really? Now?

But the look on Mike’s face was sweet, like he’d thought that was a compliment. He gave Jay a moony grin and reached up to hold his face in both hands. 

“I told myself I could never do this,” Mike said. “But I knew I would, if you let me.”

“This?” 

“Um.” Mike seemed to either lose his train of thought or regret saying that. He looked down at their laps. Jay’s dick was hard against Mike’s stomach, drooling precome onto his work shirt, and Mike’s was right there, enormous and slicked up with lotion. Jay wondered if he should just-- Sit? He’d seen what came next in porn a thousand times, but now it felt like there was something he was missing. Mike looked up at him again. “Don’t want to hurt you, is all,” he said. 

“You won’t,” Jay said, grabbing Mike’s dick in one hand and pulling his ass cheeks open with the other, taking that like a dare. 

It wouldn’t occur to him for a long time that Mike hadn’t meant _with my dick_, that he was afraid of hurting Jay in some larger sense. By then Mike would have done it, a lot, and whenever he did Jay would think back to when Mike had said that and how Jay had impaled himself on Mike’s cock in response, too fast, like he wanted to say: you think you can hurt me? Not if I do it first.

“Careful, oh, jesus--” Mike said while Jay made god knew what kind of choked-off noises, his eyes smashed shut and both his hands clawed into Mike’s shoulders. “Slow down, hang on--”

“It’s fine,” Jay said, barely getting the words out for how pinched his voice was. It hurt and felt impossible, trying to get more of Mike into him even with gravity on his side, but he was drunk and determined enough to keep inching himself downward. “Oh, god. Just. Mike--”

“You don’t have to-- _Nngh_, jesus, fuck yeah--”

Jay’s mind had gone mostly offline at that point. He was shaking and sweating and clinging to Mike, keeping his eyes pinched shut like in doing so he could hide from how he felt like he was already failing at this. When he heard himself making a little whimpery noise he also felt Mike lick his cheek. 

“Oh, fuck, oh-- Open your eyes for a second,” Mike said.

It was an order, so Jay obeyed it without thinking. He was more than ever at Mike’s mercy, halfway down his dick. 

Mike looked concerned, which annoyed Jay enough that he grunted and tried to shove himself down a little further. This was a mistake, because doing so punched a watery little sob-like sound out of him, which was made extra unbearable by the fact that he was holding Mike’s gaze while he did it. 

“You need more of this, hang on, fuck, you’re so--” Mike moaned and grabbed for the lotion. He squirted some onto his fingers and reached down to slick more onto his cock, brushing against where Jay was held open way too wide around him in the process. They both sucked in their breath at the feeling, and Jay whined when Mike touched him there again, now on purpose. 

“Ah,” Jay said, not sure what he wanted to ask for. More, less? It was the weirdest kind of perfect agony, being pulled open like that and hovering on the edge of taking more. 

“Fucking hell-- Jay--” Mike was watching Jay’s face when Jay peeked at him. He’d let his eyes flutter shut for a second. “C’mere and kiss me,” Mike said, already muttering this against Jay’s mouth. “You’re so red, fuck, and you’re _hot_.” 

Jay assumed Mike meant his body temperature, which was boiling, sweat streaking down his back while Mike stroked him there. Jay made a pathetic attempt to kiss back but mostly just let Mike devour him and then lick at him so softly that it felt a little insulting. It also felt good, kinda reassuring, so Jay didn’t stop him. He just sighed against Mike’s mouth and let it go on and on. Mike had moved his hands to Jay’s hips and was rubbing circles there with his thumbs, trying to get him to relax.

Jay wanted to explain that it wasn’t a matter of relaxing or not; Mike was huge and he was tiny. This had never felt more inescapable. If it also felt a little good, Jay couldn’t quite understand why in the moment. He moaned at the first drag of Mike’s dick over his prostate, even that feeling like almost too much. Still, he inched himself back upward a little so he could feel it again.

“Yeah, there you go,” Mike muttered, his voice husky in a way that almost made Jay laugh. Mike was so fucking corny, petting him and kissing him like he was a-- Well, Mike knew what he was, surely. Jay supposed all these attempts at tenderness were considerate, if also cheesy, and that he shouldn’t take offense. 

“Don’t,” Jay said when Mike reached up under his shirt to squeeze the chub around his waist. That seemed like too much, too revealing or something, even considering their current configuration. Jay felt newly drunk and laughed at himself when Mike moved his hands to his back again. Mike looked stricken for being told he couldn’t touch whatever else he’d been after.

They kissed some more and Jay worked himself the rest of the way down, hissing and wincing at moments. Mike was breathing hard and shaking a little, probably forcing himself not to tip Jay over and fuck him hard. Jay sort of wanted that, just feared he wouldn’t survive it if he skipped over this holy-shit-it’s-really-all-in phase of fucking. Not that he even remotely knew what he was doing. Mike hadn’t been with a guy before, unless he’d done it without ever touching the guy’s dick, which was possible-- Regardless, he was drunk and seemed lost, too. Jay held Mike’s face close to his and stared into his eyes, trying to prove something he supposed he’d already demonstrated by coming to a full seat on Mike’s dick. 

“Jesus christ,” Mike said. He’d said it about a hundred times, his voice getting progressively weaker, like Jay was sucking out his life force or something. “You, are you-- Okay? Still?”

“Mhm.” Jay nodded and closed his eyes. He shifted back a little and whined when it was close to feeling good but also still too much. 

“Does it hurt?” Mike asked. 

Jay rolled his eyes at the stupid question. Mike looked distressed. He was holding onto Jay’s spread-apart thighs, and his hands were sweaty and kept slipping, or maybe it was Jay’s thighs that were sweatier. This was not what sex was supposed to be like, Jay was sure. He felt melted and sort of immobile, also afraid that Mike was going to cry or something. 

“It’s really fucking weird,” Jay said, not knowing how else to describe it. 

“Because it’s me?”

“No-- I don’t know. I mean, yeah, in the sense that you have a horse cock, I guess.”

This made Mike laugh, which felt good, first at the center of Jay’s chest and then because it was sort of jamming Mike’s dick into him in a different, interesting way. 

“Shit,” Mike said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know--”

“No, it’s weird because, ah. It’s kinda good. But, just. Mmph, Mike, I dunno. Don’t make me talk.” 

Jay didn’t like how broken up and weak his voice sounded, for one. He wished they’d put some music on or something. They’d been watching movies for a while but had gotten too distracted by talking to keep up with whatever they’d progressed to. Jay couldn’t even remember. He moaned when he thought about how this would probably hurt worse tomorrow, when he wasn’t drunk anymore. 

“Is it okay if I talk?” Mike asked. 

“No,” Jay said, and he grinned at the wounded look on Mike’s face. “Ugh, what. What do you want to say? I don’t think you’re supposed to talk, you know, mph-- Like this, when you’re fuh, fucking.” 

“We’re not fucking yet, really.”

“Oh my god, what? Your dick is up my ass, what are you talking about?”

Mike started laughing and Jay tried to resist, afraid of how it would feel if he moved his shoulders and chest too erratically, but then it just felt good, and he couldn’t stop laughing anyway. 

“I think this is still pre-gaming,” Mike said.

“Shut the fuck up, _what_? Easy for you to say!”

That made Mike laugh hard, and Jay moaned and arched into it, because it was like some kind of pre-thrusting, kinda perfect. 

“I feel like I’m screwing this up,” Mike said. “No pun intended.”

“That makes two of us.” 

Jay let Mike kiss him some more, embarrassed by how much he liked that Mike was nervous, too. He wasn’t sure what he’d thought when Mike lunged over to kiss him, but it wasn’t that Mike might love him back, and now he was thinking, shoving his tongue into Mike’s mouth and petting his hair: well, maybe?

“Hey, seriously,” Mike said, whispering this when he pulled back. “You feel, this is, like-- Really, ah--”

“I know,” Jay said, not wanting Mike to whisper anything that would only make them both more uncertain about what the fuck was going on here exactly. Jay was regretting that he’d positioned himself as the action-taker, and he decided this was what was making them both feel awkward. “Um, can you, like. Move? A little, or-- _Oh_\--”

All Mike had to do was shift underneath him and hot sparks of sweet friction shot up Jay’s spine and made him fall forward in a kind of surrender to that feeling. He slumped against Mike’s chest and moaned onto his shoulder when Mike kept fucking up into him in little twitches of his hips. Jay was so ready to start letting him do all the work. He was going to start begging for more, soon. He could feel it welling up in him already, and the booze in his system was telling him that begging would just feel good, who cares, do it already.

“Mike,” he said, squeezing Mike’s shoulders. “Nnh, yeah, that’s--”

“Good?” Mike said, so eagerly that Jay would have laughed if he wasn’t moaning.

“Fuck, yes, please, don’t stop-- Actually, _ah_, oh-- More, please, _Mike_\--”

Moaning his name out like that was all it took to get Mike to flip their positions. He pushed Jay down onto the couch, onto his back. Jay stared up at Mike and felt like he’d just swallowed three more shots of bourbon. He was suddenly fearless and also now even more out of his depth. He made a whimpery sound as Mike pulled out of him just enough to make the outward drag of his dick feel really fucking good. 

“Hold on to something,” Mike said, looking kind of psycho in a way that Jay liked. It was Mike’s best look, really, and Jay was ready to have everything that it meant about Mike stabbed into him for as long as they could both stand it.

What Jay held onto was Mike. He couldn’t even really hold onto his thoughts, and didn’t want to. He did not want to think about what came after this, and couldn’t have made sense of how much he loved it if he tried. All he could do was say Mike’s name over and over while he got fucked like that: hard, like he’d asked for, like he had in his dreams. It felt amazing and intense and like nothing he’d ever dared to do to himself, guilty and alone in bed and always under the blankets, as if someone would otherwise see. Now he didn’t care that Mike was seeing him like this, with his legs spread insanely wide around Mike’s sides and his hips pressing up to meet every slamming downward thrust. It felt fucking incredible to finally be so shameless, and to show the one person he thought he’d have to always hide this from that he would beg and beg and beg for more even while getting it so hard that he was pretty sure they were going to break Mike’s crummy old couch. 

“Tell me you needed it,” Mike said when he was close. Jay could feel it and hear it and he was close, too. 

“I did, _ahh_, Mike--”

“Fuckin’ knew it, I knew it, _god_, you little-- Sometimes, hahh, god, you’ll be talking and I just, Jay-- I just want to reach over stuff my fucking fingers in your mouth.”

Jay wasn’t sure why this was so hot, or maybe anything would have been just then. He came with a strangled little cry, spurting onto both their shirts. Mike seemed stunned when he realized what had just happened, that Jay had come untouched on his dick and was still shuddering with aftershocks, staring up at Mike brainless and blissed out while Mike fucked him through it. 

“God,” Mike said, with weird softness, and he sat back so he could put his hands under Jay’s knees, holding his legs open even wider around him and still fucking into him as hard as he seemingly could. “You fucking mess,” he said, his voice cracking like this was an endearment. He smashed his eyes shut and made a bitten-off noise when he came, a goofy thing that Jay would have laughed at if he wasn’t sort of touched by the sight of Mike breaking like that.

Jay pulled Mike down onto him, then regretted it when doing so shifted Mike’s still-hard dick inside him and made him realize that he couldn’t stand any more stimulation there. He squirmed uncomfortably and winced away from Mike’s attempts to kiss him, feeling a little suffocated suddenly. Mike got the idea and pressed himself up onto his hands with a grunt. The feeling of his come gushing out as his dick pulled free was a reality that Jay somehow hadn’t anticipated. He put his hands over his face and groaned, distantly aware that his back hurt and that the rest of him felt kind of numb. 

“Shit, um. Hang on.” Mike vaulted off the couch and went into the kitchen, leaving Jay to scramble weakly for his boxers, though he supposed putting them on would just wreck them. He felt overexposed, tired and groggy. Mike’s living room had the air of a bar after the lights had been flipped on to get everybody still lingering there out. 

When Mike came back he had zipped up his jeans and was carrying a roll of paper towels. He looked either scared or like suddenly the drinking had caught up with him and he was going to barf. Jay felt too wrecked to even put his boxers on and was just holding them over his dick, not sure what the fuck to do or say to make Mike look less queasy. 

“Can I have those?” Jay asked, reaching for the paper towels when Mike just stood there with them.

“Yes, fuck, sorry--”

Mike hurried to him and handed them over. Jay tore one from the roll and glared up at Mike when he hovered.

“Can you not stare at me while I do this?” 

“Sorry.” Mike turned around, which was somehow worse. 

“Ugh,” Jay said, face blazing. His ass was a mess that he didn’t want to deal with and the room felt swimmy and overheated. He’d never liked the empty feeling he got just after coming, and should have known it would be worse with a witness. “I’ll, uh. Be right back.”

He grabbed his jeans and went into Mike’s bathroom. It wasn’t outright disgusting in there, but wasn’t cleaned to Jay’s standards, and in the midst of everything else that was uncomfortable about this moment even the hairs on the rim of the sink made his stomach clench up in way that felt dangerously pukey. He blinked at himself in Mike’s cloudy bathroom mirror and thought of what Mike said just before he came: you fucking mess. It was plainly true. He looked awful and just wanted to be home in bed, showered, alone.

He splashed water on his face once he was dressed and cleaned up as much as possible. His ass was stinging, and standing upright felt wrong, but he was confident he could walk home before his buzz wore off and regret really slammed into him. Staring at himself in the mirror again, he considered the alternative: he felt, as the person who had just been fucked so hard he would probably have trouble sitting the following day, that he could demand to sleep in Mike’s bed, with Mike wrapped around him, and also ask Mike to fetch him things during the night. Water, aspirin, hot towels, or whatever else his ass would require. 

The prospect seemed too humiliating, so he braced himself for the walk home and emerged from the bathroom. Mike was standing so close to the door that Jay jumped backward and cursed, startled.

“Are you okay?” Mike asked, eyes wide with drunken panic. 

“I’m fine, I-- I gotta go home and take a shower, though, I feel gross.”

“Oh. Right now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You could use my shower.”

“No offense, but it’s not that clean.”

They stared at each other. Jay wasn’t sure if Mike would try to kiss him or how he would react if it happened. It was possible he’d never felt shorter.

“I completely fucking love you,” Mike said, which was way worse than the kiss Jay might have kind of wanted. “Just. If you need to hear that right now.”

“Oh, god. You’re really drunk. I’m just tired, I don’t need to hear anything.”

Jay patted Mike’s chest a few times before moving around him. In the living room he stepped into his shoes and considered the fact that they’d fucked with their repair shop shirts on. It was just absurd enough to be fitting, he supposed.

“What are you doing?” Jay asked when Mike went to the door and put on his jacket.

“Taking you home,” Mike said. “I’m not just gonna, jesus. Throw you out. After that.”

“You’re not throwing me anywhere, and you’re way too drunk to drive.”

“I didn’t say I was driving!” 

“Then how exactly would you take me home?”

“Walking exists, Jay.”

“What’s the point of walking me home? No, that’s stupid. It’s a fifteen minute walk, I don’t need a chaperone.” 

“Jay, what the fuck.”

Jay held out his arms as if it was a stupid question. He was almost frantic with the need to leave before either of them sobered up. 

“I don’t know what you want,” Jay said. 

He was really asking Mike to tell him, wanting an order. Mike just stood there looking dejected, still wearing his jacket. 

“I feel like I’m gonna hurl,” Mike said when Jay walked toward the door. 

“Yeah, that was a little, uh. Vigorous. For after all that bourbon.” Jay wondered if he’d sounded this stupid drunk the whole time they’d fucked. Probably. He gave Mike’s arm a squeeze, wanting to ask him if he was okay but also not really wanting the answer.

“My legs are like jelly right now,” Mike said. “You’re really going to walk home after that?”

“I could use some air, it’ll be good. I’ll see you at work tomorrow, okay?”

He reached for the door, deciding as he did so that if Mike grabbed him and begged him to stay, he would. 

Mike just stood there looking dumbstruck. Jay predicted he would be passed out in his bed within two minutes. He was desperate to be in his own bed, so spent and taken apart that he could barely think straight, and he told himself on the walk home that he’d made the right call, because he needed to return to reality and whatever dimension they’d slipped into in Mike’s apartment wasn’t it. 

As soon as he was home he got in the shower, and the comfort of being in his own clean, uncluttered space convinced him that letting Mike mark him like territory had been a mistake. Anyway, he wasn’t a virgin anymore. This was some kind of progress. He stumbled back into the bedroom after nearly falling asleep on his feet in the shower and only allowed himself to check his phone once before passing out. Mike hadn’t texted or called. 

Jay pulled the blankets over himself and huddled down deeply into them. He felt achy but okay, maybe stronger or something. His feelings were all blurred together like a melted ice cream sundae, an unappetizing swirl of too much indulgence. A mess, like Mike had said. In the morning, that would be one of the few things that either of them had said that Jay would be sure he accurately remembered.

He woke up with a hangover that made his brain feel sand-blasted. His ass felt similar. When he showed up to work late he still expected to beat Mike there, but Mike was in his chair behind the counter as usual, looking greyish and disheveled but not remotely guilty or nervous. 

“Don’t know about you,” Mike said when Jay moved toward his own chair, realizing too late that there was a hitch in his step. “But I really tied one on last night.”

Yeah, we were together, Jay almost said. He gave Mike a look of disbelief, wondering how much he remembered. It was always hard to judge. Sitting was not as uncomfortable as he’d feared but was still a constant reminder of last night’s activities, and it annoyed him deeply that Mike had suffered no physical consequences. Jay should have bitten Mike’s neck or something. He wished he’d at least left a bruise somewhere. 

“My head is killing me,” Jay said. “Please, just. Can we just sit here quietly and drink water and not talk.”

Once in a while Jay called the shots and Mike actually obeyed him. Asking Mike not to talk was a tall order, but on that particular morning it was probably what he wanted, too. 

Foremost in the many anxieties clouded around him, Jay was worried he’d ruined his friendship with Mike. It was a massive relief to spend that first terrible day gradually accepting that this wasn’t true and probably never could be. Mike made no mention of the night before, and the only indicator that he might also remember it had happened at all was that he was a little gentler with Jay than usual, not teasing him or asking him to do any of his dirty work. He paid for their lunch and ate the onions that Jay picked off his sandwich. 

“What are you doing?” Jay asked, because this was new, also strange.

“Nothing,” Mike said, avoiding Jay’s eyes. 

Jay instructed himself to stop beating off to thoughts of Mike. It was obviously having detrimental effects on some subconscious level that vibrated silently between them, and was also very depressing as soon as he finished and was lying there alone, seemingly unable to want anyone else. His dick gave no fucks about his heart, however, and as soon as he was really going at it he slid right back into all his old fantasies, which were now mixed up with memories of how it had felt to make Mike laugh while they were locked together like that. 

He spent a further year and a half feeling sorry for himself, pining pitifully while Mike resumed his routine of sleeping with whichever women were around. What finally changed wasn’t a deep spiritual maturity like the one Jay had once thought he would experience when he had sex. He just saved up enough money for Invisalign at last. 

He lost ten pounds almost right away because of the hassle involved in removing the trays so he could eat, and even being ten pounds lighter made him feel pretty good about himself, so he bought a FitBit and a gym membership and figured he might as well try to be a little less of a mess before it was too late.

The resulting transformation took everyone by surprise, but no one more so than Jay himself. Throughout his life he’d avoided any real attempts to grow his full beard in, because the sad beginnings of his mustache had always made him look like a hillbilly teenager whose balls had only recently dropped, but with his new developing confidence he toughed it out through that stage and was rewarded immensely for his patience. With his beard properly filled out and groomed he actually looked like a grown man for the first time in his life, and kind of a handsome one at that. Working out became less tedious and more like a fun challenge, now that he could actually see his muscles. He drank dramatically less beer and watched his gut disappear, too. 

Mike did not respond well to Jay’s self-improvement. He drank more, as if to compensate for the excess beers Jay wasn’t sharing with him, gained weight, and got a little meaner. Jay got meaner, too, in response, but still did whatever Mike told him to. It was a default he couldn’t seem to break, like jerking off to thoughts of Mike.

“Notice anything different?” Jay asked when he came in to work on his first post-Invisalign day. He gave Mike a dorky smile to clue him in. 

“Hmm,” Mike said, squinting. “Not really. Are you wearing a new butt plug or something?”

“Yeah, Mike, that’s it.” 

Jay resented the fact that Mike could still make him blush with any reference to his ass or asses in general. They had never talked about that time they fucked, and Jay still hadn’t tried it with anyone else. Being freed from the oral infrastructure that would have made kissing awkward felt like a signal that he should stop waiting for Mike to jump him again and get on with his life. 

“Well, congratulations,” Mike said, loudly, when Jay went to get his coffee and silently have a sulk. “I guess you’re perfect now, that’s great. I’d say we should go out and celebrate your, like, mouth liberation, but you’re too good to drink with me now, so that’s out.”

“Oh, shut up. I just drank with you yesterday.” 

“One beer throughout the course of an entire night doesn’t even count, Jay.” 

“Fine, you want to get me wasted?” Jay turned from the coffee maker and narrowed his eyes at Mike. “It’s been a while, for me, but it’s not out of the question.”

“You’re a lightweight now,” Mike said, looking sharky already. “I’ll be helping you stand up after three beers.”

“We’ll see.”

They went out to one of their old haunts, one of the scummy neighborhood bars where they’d first gotten into the habit of drinking together near-nightly. This venue had been Mike’s choice, and after a couple of shots and two beers Jay thought it was a genius move. He hadn’t had a proper night out with Mike in too long, as doing so was antithetical to everything he was trying not to be, the guy who swooned toward Mike while laughing at his bad jokes included. He figured he deserved to indulge a little, and after a third beer, as Mike predicted, he was giggly and loose-limbed, wanting to crawl into Mike’s lap right there at the bar. 

“You’re a flirty drunk, Jay,” Mike said, which snapped him out of it a little. 

“Who’m I supposed to be flirting with?” Jay didn’t like how drunk he sounded, but it couldn’t be helped, and he’d meant to get drunk, hadn’t he? It had been, like, his whole plan for the night. 

Mike didn’t need to answer the question. He just stared at Jay in the vaguely angry way he sometimes did, like Jay’s very presence was gnawing on his nerves. This always felt like a kind of compliment, because Mike had started doing it around the time Jay got hot. Jay had not missed this. He sometimes suspected Mike wanted to fuck him again but was too scared to try after the previous semi-disaster, and he liked the idea of not letting him, though currently not as much as he liked the idea of sinking to his knees between Mike’s thick thighs. 

“People have been asking me why you’re single,” Mike said. “That’s a question I get a lot these days. Now that you’re--” Mike gestured to Jay’s face. “You know. Fuckable.” 

“I guess I wasn’t fuckable before now.”

Jay smirked after saying so, enjoying Mike’s visible squirming. He remembered, the fucker. He pretended not to, but he remembered just as much as Jay did about that night, maybe even more. 

“I meant more fuckable,” Mike said, leaning in to mutter this quietly. “Obviously.” 

“Whatever you say, Mike.”

“So why are you, anyway.”

“Fuckable?” Jay almost said: you tell me, you’re the expert.

“No, dummy. Why are you single? Why don’t you date people, now that you could have your fuckin’ pick? Are you some kinda, uhh. Misanthrope? You got some kinda disorder, pal?”

“Why are you doing a voice.”

“I don’t know, it just started happening and I went with it.” 

Mike tried not to grin but failed. Jay was sort of slouched in Mike’s direction, also smiling. 

“I missed doing this,” Jay said, as if it wasn’t obvious.

“Being a slovenly wreck with me in public? Yeah, I can tell how much you miss it. You seem real miserable lately. Har har.”

“M’not miserable obviously but I still miss it. I just can’t have both.”

“Both what.”

“My, uhh, dignity, and my-- Stuff I want.”

“Stuff,” Mike said, doing his intense-stare thing again. 

“Uh-huh. Beers and whatever.”

“And whatever.” 

Mike looked like he thought he could win this game. Jay had spent a lot of time thinking about how he would handle himself if they fucked again, especially now that he looked like this. He wouldn’t stop Mike from pushing his hands up under his shirt to touch his chest. He’d want Mike to see him without clothes on, to be jealous and impressed and slavishly aroused instead of whatever he’d been last time-- Bored, curious, a good sport?

They stayed at the bar for a while longer, but Jay could see on Mike’s face that he was plotting where they’d go from there. A tiny alarm was going off somewhere in Jay’s chest, telling him he was too drunk to make this decision, but everything else in him felt like celebrating. What good was getting hot if he couldn’t use it to torture Mike? And if, in torturing him, he also got fucked again, wasn’t that a win-win? For one definition of fucked, anyway?

They walked back to Jay’s place, both of them suffering random laughing fits all the way there, like what they were maybe going to do to each other when they got there was some glorious inside joke and they couldn’t keep straight faces because it was already hilarious. 

“D’your teeth feel cold now they’re not wearing their little plastic sweaters?” Mike asked at one point, which was representative of the quality of their conversation on the walk to Jay’s apartment. The fact that it made Jay double over with laughter, because it was the most delightfully stupid attempt at a joke Mike had ever made, seemed to please Mike greatly. Jay hadn’t seen him smile like that in a while. It made him want to crash against Mike’s side while they walked, and when he did, Mike put an arm around him and called him a cheap date. 

“No, it’s true, though,” Jay said when he could talk again, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “It’s, you get cold, all the time, real easy, when you lose weight.” 

“I wouldn’t know. I’ll warm you up, Jay, don’t you worry.” 

“Not worried, Mike.”

They beamed at each other idiotically. Jay wouldn’t remember it when he sobered up, but in the moment he was sure Mike loved him so much. He could feel it against his face like reflected light.

It was a cold, clear night with a big moon. Jay didn’t put the lights on in his apartment when they walked in, because the crazy moonlight through the windows was perfect, fucking cinematic. He locked the door once they were inside and laughed when Mike fell on him as soon as he turned, already breathing hard. 

“You always look like you think you know what you’re getting into,” Mike said, opening Jay’s belt. His breath was hot against Jay’s face, and Jay wasn’t sure why they weren’t kissing yet. “And then you don’t.”

“No idea what you’re--” Jay tried to say, and the _talking about_ got stuffed back into his mouth by Mike’s tongue.

Jay threw his arms around Mike’s neck and laughed against his mouth when Mike stopped trying to get into his pants and picked him up instead, pulling Jay’s legs open around him as he hoisted him up against his chest. Mike braced him back against the door and held him there, still kissing him. Jay was so shamelessly hungry for it that he feared it was obvious he hadn’t kissed anyone since Mike. Until today, at least he’d had the apparatus on his teeth as an excuse.

“Trying to prove something?” Jay said when Mike pulled back to give him that angry look again. 

“Huh?” Mike said.

“Holding me, like--” Jay squirmed in Mike’s grip, already hard in his pants for being manhandled like that. “Like, proving you’re still, uh. Stronger, or something.” 

“I don’t need some douchey weight lifting routine to pick your scrawny ass up off the floor.” 

“Uh-huh, yeah, but you needed me to know that, huh?”

“Gonna make sure you know a lot of things, Jay.”

“Oh?” 

“Yep. You think I don’t notice how you, uh-- Strutting around in your tight little shirts--”

“My shirts aren’t that tight.” 

“You don’t just want my dick,” Mike said, pushing Jay back against the door a little more firmly. “You think you fuckin’ deserve it, don’t you?”

“No, I--” Jay shook his head and flexed in Mike’s grip, feeling his determination to be smooth and confident this time draining away. “Mike,” he said, squeezing him with his thighs, begging. 

“What, Jay.”

“Nnh, just.” Jay had no experience asking for what he wanted, which was just to do whatever Mike told him. Could he ask for that? Would asking defeat the purpose? He was too drunk to figure it out. “I don’t know what I deserve,” he said, his voice getting smaller with every word. This was true, too real. “You have to show me, okay?”

Mike gave him an evil smirk. Jay shivered in his grip and bit his bottom lip, trying to look as pitiful as possible. Doing so had not been his plan, not remotely, but he already felt stripped down to his true self, needy and desperate and ready to be put on his hands and knees.

“I can do that,” Mike said, carrying him toward the bedroom. 

“I know you can.” 

Jay put his chin on Mike’s shoulder and closed his eyes, his cock already drooling into the front of his briefs for how good he knew he was about to get it. He hadn’t been so drunk or so happy in a long time. No amount of gushing flattery from his friends and family about how he looked like a different person, which was understood to be a compliment, had felt as good as being thrown down onto his bed by Mike did, because Mike was looking at him like he was the same puny little fucker he’d always been, and like he needed to be put back in his place.

“Strip for me,” Mike said, hanging back with just one knee on the bed. “You vain little fuck. Show me the fucking goods, I know you want to.”

“Mike,” Jay said in mild protest, and he took off his sweater, pulling his undershirt off along with it. It was chilly in his bedroom and his nipples were already hard. When he was bare-chested he flopped onto his back and reached for the front of his pants.

“Slower,” Mike said when Jay started to push them down. “You think you’re such hot shit now. Gimme a show.” 

“I don’t think that,” Jay said, though he did, sort of. Just not when he was around Mike, usually.

“Do what I told you to,” Mike said, and Jay felt the words settle over him like a filthy touch, lighting everything up and making him ache to have Mike on top of him, biting at his nipples and pinning his wrists to the bed.

Jay made a soft noise at the back of his throat, a little petulant thing to signal that he was embarrassed but going to do what Mike had asked of him anyway. He inched his jeans and briefs down together, his face blazing as he wondered if he was going slow enough. Mike was looking at his chest, then his belly, licking his lips. They both groaned when Jay’s cock finally popped free, hard and red and leaking.

“Fuck,” Mike said, under his breath. He palmed at his erection through his pants, licking his lips again. “Haven’t even touched you yet, really,” Mike said, giving Jay a taunting smile. “And you’re already-- Looks like you’d come if I breathed on your dick.”

“Nnh,” Jay said, not quite denying this. His pants and briefs were down around his thighs and he was still working them off slowly, probably awkwardly, for Mike’s entertainment. 

“You’re in big trouble, you know that?” Mike said, still rubbing at his trapped cock. 

“Thought you were gonna warm me up,” Jay said.

“Oh, you’ll be fucking warm all right.”

Mike moved forward with a grunt and grabbed the waistband of Jay’s pants and briefs, yanking them down so hard that Jay yelped a little in surprise. His dick twitched against his belly and he was breathless when Mike left him naked and reeling, one of Jay’s socks coming off as he stripped the pants over his ankles. Jay panted up at Mike, totally exposed and feeling even stupider for having one sock still on, also pretty sure Mike was right that he was going to come as soon as Mike breathed on him. 

“Better go get something,” Mike said, kneeling up over Jay on all fours. 

“Some-- Something?”

“For your ass, so I can fuck you. That’s what you want, right?”

“Jesus, _yes_.” 

Jay sat up and tried for a kiss. Mike pulled back a little, smirked at the look of chastised disappointment on Jay’s face, then gave in and kissed him hard, until he was pressed to the bed again.

“What are you doing, Jay?” Mike asked, murmuring this against Jay’s neck when he’d moved to kiss him there. “Thought you were going to get some lube.”

“You-- I can’t--”

“Thought you wanted me to fuck you.”

“Mike!” Jay wasn’t sure what the right response was, what Mike was trying to tease out of him. He was relieved when Mike pinned his hands and looked down at him with a sweetness that was maybe unintentional in his eyes. 

“Do you get all disoriented like this with everyone?” Mike asked. “God, that’s, like. My favorite thing. How stupid sex makes you.”

“I just, I’m not--”

“It’s okay, I’ll get the lube. Point me in the right direction.” 

Jay sat up on his elbows and rubbed his face against Mike’s, trying to think about how to respond. He was drunk, so it wasn’t fair to say it was sex that was making him stupid, though certainly it wasn’t helping.

“Just get the conditioner from my shower,” he said, nudging Mike with his knee. “That’ll work.”

“Really.” Mike’s eyebrows went up. He seemed surprised that Jay didn’t have any proper lube. Jay actually did, but he kept it in the dresser drawer where he also kept the roughly Mike-sized silicone dick he fucked himself with at least once a week, and he didn’t want Mike seeing that right now, or ever.

Mike left to get the suggested lube and Jay flopped onto his back again, congratulating himself for thinking fast enough not to send Mike to the drawer with that dildo in it. He rubbed his hands over his face and turned onto his stomach when Mike came back in. Mike had a look on his face like maybe he’d sobered up a little on his way back from Jay’s bathroom. Jay ducked his head and peeked back at Mike from around his arm as he came up onto all fours, ass pointed in Mike’s direction.

“Oh holy shit,” Mike said, voice shaking.

Jay grinned against his arm and batted his eyelashes. He’d wanted all of this for so long, too long. It was dangerous to do it on the day when he finally got those things pulled off his teeth for good. He felt invincible, or something.

“D’you find the stuff?” Jay asked, though he could see that Mike was holding the bottle of conditioner that Jay used to finger himself in the shower on occasion. Mike had also taken off his pants, shoes and socks, but still had everything else on, tented boxers included.

“The-- yeah.” Mike looked at the bottle in his hand, then back at Jay. “Is that how you like it?” he asked, walking closer.

“Hmm?”

“On your hands and knees. Like that.”

“Oh, um.” Jay wiggled his ass a little, probably treading into corny territory. Mike didn’t look like he minded. He was not in a critical place at present. “I dunno,” Jay said, feigning bashfulness. It was true that he didn’t know if he’d like being taken from behind, except that when he tried to fuck himself like this he felt awkward and dirty and burned all over with how much he wanted another person back there to do it for him. In his mind it was always Mike, with his hot, heavy cock and his big hands holding Jay’s hips in place hard enough to hurt.

“You look, fucking--” Mike’s words choked away as he approached the bed. Jay turned away from him and pressed his crazed grin to the mattress, shivering across the small of his back when he felt Mike kneeling on the bed behind him. 

Jay was going to ask Mike what he looked like, hoping he’d get called a slut or something worse, but his voice died in his throat when Mike touched him, his giant hands sliding from Jay’s hips and up over his back, to his shoulders. Jay closed his eyes and left his mouth open against the bed, already drooling a little for the feeling of-- Just, finally-- He heard Mike moaning under his breath, soft in a way that made him sound overwhelmed, too. 

“Fucking hell,” Mike muttered when his hands slid back down to Jay’s ass. The reverent, almost cautious way he was touching Jay’s skin made him shudder all over. He never wanted to live another moment without Mike’s hands on him like that. “You, just,” Mike said, swallowing audibly. “You’re just gonna let me have-- Have you? Like this?”

“Mhmm,” Jay said, nodding against the bed. He flexed his back and pushed his ass into Mike’s grip, coming up onto his elbows to peek back at Mike again. “Yeah,” he said, not needing to affect a nervous, needy little voice. It just came out that way.

“Jesus, fuck, okay, um.” Mike cleared his throat and bent down to kiss Jay at the center of his back. He pushed one hand up into Jay’s hair and scratched him there fondly, his other hand gripping Jay’s hip in a decisive way, holding him tight. 

Jay spread his knees apart a bit more widely, and Mike got the idea, grabbing for the bottle of conditioner that he’d dropped on the bed. 

“You don’t have to,” Jay said when Mike slicked his fingers, his dick still contained in his boxers for some reason. 

“I know,” Mike said, and he dragged one wet finger down the crack of Jay’s ass, effectively shutting him up. Jay’s shoulders went slack and he moaned against the bedsheets. “Just making sure you’re still nice and tight for me,” Mike said, and Jay moaned again, louder, either for that sentiment or because Mike was circling his hole as he said so, teasing him.

“Mike,” Jay said, rapidly accepting that his name was going to be the only thing he’d manage to vocalize, going forward.

“Oh fuck yeah,” Mike said when he pushed his finger inside, slow like a taunt. Jay was already twitching his hips, trying to inch back and take him deeper, gasping his breath against the bedsheets for how good that felt. “Yeah, that’s-- God, fuck. So tight, mhm, yeah. Gonna feel so good around my cock.” 

Jay groaned and tried to slam himself back against Mike’s finger. Mike held him steady with one hand. A flush of heat that started on Jay’s face seemed to race over his whole body, throbbing through him and making him try again to buck his hips. Mike laughed a little under his breath.

“Fuckin’ desperate for it,” he said, murmuring this like he was talking to himself.

He wasn’t wrong. Jay felt like he might start sobbing for how good this already was and how much he’d needed it. He fisted the sheets and arched his back more dramatically, clenching up around Mike’s finger. 

“Please,” he managed to say, his voice all weak and watery already.

“Hush,” Mike said, dragging his knuckle over Jay’s prostate as he gave this command, which made it impossible to obey: Jay made a garbled noise of senseless pleasure and clawed at the sheets. “Gonna take my time with you, Jay,” Mike said, now rubbing his knuckle in circles there, calmly watching Jay go crazy for it. “You think you’re desperate now? Ha, just wait.”

Jay whimpered and let himself go full-surrender in Mike’s grip. He didn’t even have a word for it yet, that place where he went to when it was just him and what Mike wanted from him, everything in him singing with the need to do it, to be good for him, to be of use. He uncurled his hands against the sheets and rubbed his cheek against the wet spot that he’d already drooled onto them. 

“Mike,” he said, over and over again while Mike played with him like that. Mike rubbed at Jay’s hip, somewhere between taunting and soothing him while fucking him open with one finger at a leisurely, sanity-testing pace. Jay chewed at his lips but couldn’t keep it in. It felt too good to say Mike’s name like that, like it was a word that meant _please_, _more_, and _don’t stop_ all at once.

By the time Mike slid his finger out Jay was in a blissful nowhere place, the combination of the haze of drinking and being lit up all over by Mike’s hands holding him there in perfect balance. He was shaky and close to coming just from having his prostate teased for fuck knew how long; he already had no sense of how long they’d been at this. He hissed and almost couldn’t take it when Mike dragged his slicked-up cockhead over his hole, where he was hyper-sensitive. 

“Fuck, man,” Mike said, pulling his cock back to spank Jay’s flank with it, then the crack of his ass. “You were fucking made for this, you know that?”

“Yes,” Jay said, so emphatically that he barely recognized his own roughed-up voice. 

“I’m gonna stay in you all fucking night,” Mike said. Jay could hear that his jaw was clenched, probably from the effort of not pushing his dick in yet. He was rubbing the head around the rim of Jay’s hole, making him shake harder for how much he wanted it inside him, deeper than Mike’s fingers or even that silicone cock in the drawer could go. “Hear that?” Mike said, pulling his cock back to smack Jay’s ass with it again. “Hmm? Ready to have you in me all night long?”

“Fuck yes,” Jay said, grunting this out against the sheets. He couldn’t have lifted is head if he wanted to, couldn’t stop bowing. 

“Do you even know any words that aren’t yes right now, you desperate fucking slut?”

Jay could feel himself start to come but still couldn’t really believe it was happening, just for the sound of Mike’s voice and the feeling of his dick dragging along the crack of his ass like a threat. He gasped and shuddered and spurted onto the sheets, his knees giving out just as Mike caught him and held him so that his ass was still lifted.

“Jesus fucking christ,” Mike said, muttering this so soft that it was like he didn’t want Jay to hear it. “Jay, um. Holy fuck, you just. Came?”

Jay whimpered and hid his burning face against the sheets. The aftershocks of his orgasm were still rolling through him, making him tremble and pant. He sighed and shifted his legs open a little wider when Mike rubbed his shoulders with one hand, holding Jay’s hips flush against his thighs with the other.

“You’re so fucking sensitive, it’s crazy,” Mike said, rubbing his cock against Jay’s hole as if he needed to continue to prove this. Mike sniffed out a little laugh and ran his hands over Jay’s sides. “Pretending to be all neat and tidy these days. Should have known, though. Still so fucking _messy_ for me. God, how many times could I make you come in one night? Poor Jay, you’re just getting started.”

Jay didn’t try to keep up with Mike’s monologing, just let the rumble of Mike’s increasingly cocky voice wash over him like another kind of touch. He make an embarrassingly soft little noise of gratitude when Mike finally started to push inside him. Mike moaned in answer, and though Jay’s face was flush with the bed he felt like he could see Mike’s expression clearly in his mind’s eye as he watched himself disappear into the tight heat of Jay’s ass, inch by inch, still moving at an infuriatingly slow pace. He would look smug, above all, like he’d won the game they were always playing against each other. He’d be biting his lip, almost smiling. 

“Oh fuck yeah,” Mike said, petting Jay’s back when he started to shake all over for how overwhelming it was to feel Mike sink deeper and deeper after he’d already come, everything inside him still buzzing and oversensitive. He felt like a raw nerve but didn’t want it to stop, just wanted more, his teeth grit as he took it. “There you go, good,” Mike said, still petting him, still pushing inside. “Good, Jay. God, you fucking needed it. Feels so good, that’s, _ah_. I can feel it on my fucking cock, how bad you need it in you.”

Jay tried to laugh but it came out as more of a pathetic huff. He rubbed his face against the sheets and rolled his hips back, wanting Mike to see how greedy he was for this. It was so much easier now that he knew what the fuck he was doing, how to relax for this, and a thousand times better than pushing something dick-shaped into himself. Mike’s cock was hot and perfect, deep inside him in a way that toy could never be. Jay had powered down everything in him that worried about anything. He was in Mike’s hands and nothing could go wrong as long as Mike did whatever the fuck he wanted.

“Jesus, I could live inside you,” Mike said, his voice wavering a little when he was all in and leaning over Jay’s back, mouthing at his neck. “Jay, fuck. You, just. Nobody’s like you, fucking nobody.”

Mike whined at the back of his throat, like admitting this hurt. He exhaled heavily and Jay moaned when it made Mike’s cock shift inside him, just a little. Mike nosed at Jay’s neck and hugged his arms around him, then pushed them up against the mattress and put his hands over Jay’s. 

“Like that?” Mike asked, murmuring this against Jay’s ear when he’d started fucking into him in shallow little ruts, making Jay moan already. 

“Mike,” Jay said in answer, clenching up hard around him. 

“Oh, god, careful,” Mike said, going still behind him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay, all right. I’m good.”

Jay snorted. Mike grunted and wrapped his arms around Jay’s chest again, leaning in to bite at his ear. 

“Ah,” Jay said, doing a full body shudder. “Do that, that, again--”

“Your ear?” Mike licked him there and snickered when Jay moaned and tried to move within Mike’s vice grip on him, his hips struggling futilely. “Aw, hey,” Mike said, his lips moving on the rim of Jay’s ear and making him shiver. “I’ve noticed this, your ears get all pink when you’re embarrassed. They’re so hot now, god, like. Burning. Everything, you’re just. All feverish. That dick feeling good inside you?” 

He shunted forward a little as he asked and Jay shouted, nodding. 

“Fuck yes,” Jay said, trembling all over with his efforts to fuck himself back onto Mike. He just wanted to do what Mike wanted but couldn’t make his body stop chasing more of the feeling of that massive stretch at his rim and the fullness in his ass, couldn’t make himself be good. It didn’t seem to matter, since Mike was holding him steady with ease, stuffed so deep and thick inside him that it was like he was using his cock to hold Jay still, too. 

“Be patient,” Mike said, licking at his ear again. “Not gonna fuck this greedy ass till I’m good and ready.”

“Mike,” Jay said. He was hard again, dripping and wanting Mike’s hand on his dick. He didn’t dare ask for it, or anything.

Mike took his sweet time, probably trying to last as much as he was trying to torment Jay with drawn out pleasure that made him progressively more of a drooling idiot on Mike’s dick as he gradually, tortuously got the thrusting he was desperate for. Jay went boneless against the bed and eventually lost his voice from near-constant moaning. When Mike really started fucking into him, slamming home with a series of angry-sounding grunts and using his grip on Jay’s hips to drag him back and forth on his dick like a ragdoll, Jay felt certain he would not be able to live without having this every night for the rest of his life. He would get on his knees and beg daily, if Mike needed him to. He was ready to give Mike his entire soul in a gift-wrapped package when he came for a second time, again untouched, while Mike pummeled into him. 

“God, you--” Mike said, sounding like someone was punching the words out of him while he fucked Jay through his orgasm. “You have no, no-- No fucking idea how good that feels, _fuck_\--”

Jay thought he did have some idea, drifting in post-orgasmic surrender, though he supposed he’d never felt someone have an orgasm while his cock was buried inside them, which was maybe what Mike meant. He cried out when Mike pulled all the way out of his ass, and braced himself as best as he tiredly could for Mike to slam back in. 

Mike didn’t do that. He flipped Jay over, onto his back, and jacked his dick in a frantic blur of his fist until he was coming with a groan, unloading all over Jay’s splayed out chest and belly, also his throat. 

“Fuck,” Mike said, falling forward. He held himself up for half a breath and then dropped onto Jay with as much care as he seemingly could, depositing the trembling mess of himself onto Jay’s chest like he wanted to be cuddled there against his own cooling come.

Jay felt like he couldn’t breathe, buried under Mike like that. He made no effort to move away, just lifted his shaky arms and draped them around Mike loosely, panting up at the ceiling. They were both sweat-soaked and overheated. Mike’s hair was damp when Jay pushed his fingers through it. 

“Sorry,” Mike said, mumbling this against Jay’s collarbone. “I know I’m crushing you.” 

“It’s fine,” Jay said, his broken voice making his struggle to breathe sound even more dramatic. 

Mike lifted himself up with a grunt and looked down at Jay. He seemed to be searching Jay’s eyes for something. All Jay could do was lie there brainlessly and hope Mike found whatever he was looking for.

“Lemme do one more thing,” Mike said, and he slid two fingers into Jay’s mouth. “Fuck, I. Meant to do that when I was in you. Forgot.”

Jay coughed a little and Mike took his fingers out. He slumped over onto his side with a groan and Jay stayed on his back, realizing with some regret that he was already falling asleep. He’d never felt so well-used or worn down in his life. 

When he woke up he was alone in the bed and could hear the TV going out in his living room. He could also smell pizza, which was weird. 

He rolled onto his side with a wince and took stock of things, running his hand down over his chest. Mike had cleaned him up and put a blanket over him. Jay sat up and moaned at the ache in his ass, consulting his bedside clock. It was only a little bit after midnight, somehow. He felt like he’d slept for a full century. It was freezing in his bedroom, even under the blanket. This room had smelled like sex before, but always the lonely kind that he had with himself. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this other kind of sweaty sex scent, too distracted by the pizza smell from the living room to really decide. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jay asked, squinting at Mike when he was standing in the doorway between his bedroom and the living room, the blanket Mike had draped over him wrapped around his shoulders. 

Mike was on the couch, watching Packers highlights and eating a pizza, fully dressed. 

“Hey, you’re awake,” Mike said, patting the couch cushion beside him. “Hungry?”

“You-- What? You ordered a fucking pizza?”

“Yeah, I was starving. Really worked up an, uh. Appetite.”

Jay blinked at Mike, mouth hanging open. What was happening? He was afraid to ask.

“What?” Mike asked, his voice sharpening up a little. “You don’t allow pizza in your apartment anymore? Health food boy?”

“I just--” Jay looked at his apartment’s front door, imagining Mike meeting a pizza delivery guy there while reeking of sex. “Can you turn that down?” he asked when a commercial blared on the TV. “I’m trying to sleep, jesus.”

“You’re not hungry, huh?”

“No, Mike, it’s fucking midnight.”

“So what? The wings at the bar don’t count as dinner--”

“Can you just turn the fucking TV down, please!” 

The sound of a car dealership commercial was hammering against Jay’s skull. He was rapidly getting a headache. His heart was starting to hurt, too. 

Mike grumbled to himself and flipped the TV off entirely. He used some napkins to wipe pizza grease off his hands and stood. 

“Want me to take the rest home with me?” he asked, gesturing to the pizza box. “So you won’t be tempted?”

“Do whatever the fuck you want, Mike.”

Jay went back into the bedroom, disgusted with Mike. What a fucking child. Stupid asshole. Self-destructive fucking mess. Fuck him.

He curled up on the bed under his blanket, heart hammering. When Mike came into the bedroom with a sigh, Jay pretended to be asleep. He assumed it was obvious that he actually wasn’t, especially when Mike kissed his cheek. Jay could feel himself scowling. 

“Want me to stay?” Mike asked, muttering this softly. His breath was warm on Jay’s face. Jay wanted Mike in bed with him so bad it hurt, but he felt condescended to, pitied, and didn’t want Mike to stay out of obligation, so he said nothing and kept his eyes closed.

Mike took the pizza with him when he left. This was a Friday, and Jay didn’t see him again until work on Monday. Mike didn’t call or text all weekend. Jay had expected it, this time, but he was still burning with secret rage when he got to work and Mike gave him that ‘what’d I do?’ look. 

Jay had a plan and he kept to it. He was cheerful, offering no hint that he remembered Friday night or that he’d briefly been willing and ready to sign over his mortal soul to Mike for fucking him so well. He made his coffee as usual, gave Mike a mild, friendly look and asked him how his weekend had been.

“Fine,” Mike said. He was blushing. “How about you.”

“Pretty good, actually. I ran ten miles yesterday. That’s a first for me.”

“Wow.” 

“Yep.”

They both turned to look at the shop’s front door, though nobody was coming through it. Jay sipped from his coffee. It was still too hot and burned his tongue. When Mike groaned, Jay thought he might say something about Friday night. He gave Mike a nervous glance, felt his ears burning. 

“So sick of winter,” Mike said, staring straight ahead. 

Jay turned and saw a dusting of snowfall had started outside. He grunted in acknowledgment and ignored the ship that was sinking in his heart, plunging down to join the rotting wreck of the other one that was wasting away there.

He made a solemn vow to himself that day: never again. No matter how drunk they were or how desperate he got. He made himself a Grindr profile and started going out to the neighborhood gay bar. Within a month a guy he’d slept with twice was asking him to be his boyfriend.

Jay said no, without regret. The sex wasn’t that good. To his great displeasure, nobody he’d fucked around with compared to Mike. 

Yet, he told himself, and kept trying.

His resolve for avoiding any further misadventures with Mike stayed strong for three whole years, and during that time he had dozens of other men, though mostly in the first year. After they all proved annoying or dissatisfying for various reasons, he lost some of his drive to continue investigating his options. It was so much work to sort through all the hamfistedly aggro and pretentious assholes and find someone he could tolerate, and even tolerable people were exhausting. He kept his dating angst to himself and shrugged when his increasingly baffled family asked him if he was ever going to settle down with anyone. Most nights he had a beer or two after work with Mike and went home to watch movies alone. He gained ten pounds back but decided it looked good on him and continued allowing himself a sane amount of beer and the occasional loaded baked potato dinner, his favorite.

Mike lost a little weight, meanwhile. Jay wasn’t sure how he did it and didn’t ask. Mike still drank whatever he pleased and ate philly cheesesteaks for lunch at least once a week. He also still looked at Jay in a way that knocked things over inside him, but Jay had gotten good at calmly picking those things back up and putting them in place again, no matter how many times it happened. 

What finally felled his resolve was a terrible nightmare that he woke from alone and which wouldn’t leave the boundaries of his apartment even after he was awake and telling himself over and over again that it was only a dream. He shouldn’t have watched a series of unsettling giallo movies before bed, shouldn’t have started reading the news again, shouldn’t have had so much coffee during the day. He paced around and told himself to get over it, grow up. 

It was two o’clock on a Saturday morning. Mike would still be out at the bars, Jay thought, and he snarled at himself for even considering Mike’s whereabouts.

No, he thought, staring down at his phone and twiddling it in his hand. No fucking way. 

He waited another hour and still couldn’t sleep or even concentrate on the funny, lighthearted movie he was attempting to watch to distract himself from the way that dream had made him feel, which was mostly like: you will die alone and it will be your own damn fault. 

He gave up resisting and came up with a plan. He’d pretend to be freshly home from a night out at the Milwaukee gay bars. He hadn’t actually spent a Friday night that way in years, but Mike assumed he did and Jay let Mike assume what he wanted to. Jay sighed and typed up what would seem like a drunk text, telling himself that if it worked at least he would get what he wanted, Mike’s company until dawn, and wouldn’t have to admit anything more humiliating than wanting some dick at an odd hour of the night. 

Jay sent the text: _hey r y awake? need u_

Mike responded way more quickly than Jay had expected:

_Oh no what’s wrong???_

Jay rolled his eyes at himself and typed out his response.

_can you come ovr? im horny & i need what yur packin. doors unlocked._

This time the response came a little slower, but still within a minute:

_Jesus jay don’t leave your door unlocked_  
_Have you seen some of the people these days??_  
_ok im coming hold your butt_

So Mike was actually drunk, Jay thought, reading this. Good. It was best that way. Mike either wouldn’t remember this in the morning, or would pretend not to. As usual.

Jay unlocked his door and stretched out in bed, feeling daring in defiance of the dream that had scared him so bad. He got out his lube, then swapped it for the conditioner, as a kind of mean joke or sentimental signal, he wasn’t sure. He was fingering himself idly under the blankets when he heard his apartment’s front door open.

“Jay?” Mike called. “Hello? I’m here!” 

“Back here,” Jay said, reminding himself to pretend to be drunk. He reached up to mess up his already bed-wrecked hair a bit more. 

“I’m bolting your door, you reckless fuck! Jesus, anyone could have walked in here.”

Jay heard Mike locking up and chewed on his lip, wondering if he should just get up on all fours and stick his ass in Mike’s direction again. Mike loomed into the bedroom doorway before he could decide. 

“Oh my god,” Mike said, grabbing the door frame with both hands. He looked so hammered that Jay doubted he’d be able to get it up, which was fine. Mike’s dick would be a bonus if they could manage to fuck, but that wasn’t what Jay really needed.

“Hi,” Jay said, sitting up so the blanket slipped down to reveal his bare shoulders.

“Are you, like. Naked?” Mike asked, taking a few steps into the bedroom. “Under there?”

“Uh-huhh,” Jay said, glad Mike was too drunk to tell he was faking his own inebriation. “I was, mph. Out, you know. Trying to get laid. But nobody was worthy and I thought, god. I wish Mike’s cock was here.”

Mike snorted and then looked very serious, like he was forcing himself to concentrate. He stumbled forward and dropped to a heavy seat on the end of Jay’s bed. Jay let out a sigh of relief, as quietly as he could manage. It was so good to have Mike there, whatever happened next. He’d called and Mike had come, like it was his duty. 

“Why’re you so far away?” Jay asked, reaching for him. 

Something happened when Mike crawled over to him. Jay sank back against the pillows and felt his heart speed up. It was like the dream was trying to suck him back in, still lodged somewhere in the mattress below him, and he shivered when he remembered waking from it with a lurch, feeling like it was reaching out for him with powerful gravity. It was so very late at night and he’d already been so stupid. He threw his arms around Mike’s neck and clung to him, smashing his eyes shut and pulling Mike down on top of him.

“Whoa, okay,” Mike said. He squirmed in Jay’s grip and then gave up and flopped onto him, sighing. “I might need a sec before I can get it up,” he said, mumbling. “Drank too much.”

“I don’t care,” Jay said, forgetting to try to sound drunk and sounding pretty torn up in the meantime.

“Jay?” Mike tried to sit up and nosed at Jay’s neck when Jay wouldn’t let him. “Okay, what. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Fucking shut up. I’m-- Fine, I just. I’m just pissed that you can’t get it up yet.”

“Hmm. Okay.” Mike gave him a little kiss, right over the spot where Jay’s pulse was hammering. “You’re all right,” Mike said, voice soft. “I locked the door.”

“Great.” 

Mike sighed and fell asleep on top of him. His enormous thigh was pushed up across Jay’s hips, pinning him in place. Jay melted underneath him and soaked in the comfort of his body heat, the sweaty dive bar smell of him, the way his breath tickled against Jay’s throat. Mike was on top of the blankets, Jay naked underneath them. His ass was tingly from the fingering, and he still couldn’t sleep, but he felt safe, also a little stupid. He thought maybe this was what it felt like to be loved back, buried under the weight of it. He kissed Mike’s forehead and held him tighter. 

At some point he did sleep, and he woke up to Mike shifting against him. Dawn had come, just barely glowing around the edges of the blinds over the two windows across from Jay’s bed. Jay had left all the bedroom lights on, so Mike must have turned them off at some point. He’d also taken off his pants, shoes and socks. Jay rolled toward him and was met with Mike’s hot mouth against his. Jay opened for his kiss, easy and warm, like they’d planned this, or like they did it every morning. He pressed his tongue out lazily and let his eyes drift shut again. 

“Found this in the bed,” Mike said, his voice thick. He was holding the conditioner, grinning. He looked sleepy, only half awake as he slipped under the blankets with Jay. 

“I was, um. I got ready for you,” Jay said, slapping the conditioner away. “Just push in, okay? Please, I need you, I can’t-- I hate waiting, Mike.” 

“I know,” Mike said, shimmying out of his boxers.

They were kissing when Mike pushed into him, and they both groaned, breathing against each other’s open mouths. It was a tight squeeze with just the conditioner Jay had used on himself as lube, but he loved the long, sweet burn of Mike sinking into him, and the way he could feel every inch of the stretch as he was pushed open.

“Fuck yes,” Jay said, whispering this against Mike’s mouth. “God, fucking-- _shit_, you feel so good.” His voice warbled a little on that last word and he pressed his lips together, not wanting to get emotional or something. 

“Yeah?” Mike swept Jay’s hair off his forehead, his other hand braced against the headboard behind him. “You like a big, fat cock inside you first thing in the morning, Jay?”

“Oh shut up,” Jay muttered, too cozy for their usual bullshit. He supposed Mike was probably still drunk. “But. Yes.”

They both laughed, and Jay looped his arms around Mike’s neck. He lifted his legs up so they were snug against Mike’s sides and pressed his heels into Mike’s back. Mike sighed against Jay’s cheek and shifted back just a little before sinking in again, fucking him in shallow rolls of his hips and keeping close, huddled around him in a way that Jay didn’t want to think of as protective. Jay moaned when Mike nibbled at his ear, because it felt good and also because it hurt, to think he remembered Jay liked that. 

“So fucking cute,” Mike said when he pulled back to look into Jay’s eyes. “When you make that little noise. ‘Mph!’”

“Shut up, you make, ahh-- All kinds of-- _mph_! Noises.”

“Jay, jesus, fuck, you’re so--” Mike pressed his lips together, blew his breath out through his nose and fucked into Jay a little harder and more deeply, watching his face. “Want to see what you look like when you come,” he said. 

“You’ve-- Seen--”

“No, I haven’t. Wasn’t looking at your face, any of those times. Not gonna miss it this time.”

Jay didn’t protest, just let his eyes fall shut and moaned Mike’s name, digging his heels in against Mike’s back to prod him to move faster. He sighed and felt himself grinning when Mike found his hands and pinned them over his head, against his pillow.

“God, yeah,” Jay said when Mike picked up the pace the way he’d wanted him to. “So good, fuck. Like that, _nhhhh_, yeah--” 

“Shh, I know how you like it.” 

“Mph--”

They’d both started sweating under the blankets. Jay kept trying to tip himself open even wider for Mike, pressing into every thrust. He flexed his hands under Mike’s and bit his lip to stifle his smile when Mike wouldn’t let him budge. 

“Can’t believe you let me fuck you,” Mike said. 

“Huh?” Jay knew he should ignore that, afraid Mike was about to ruin the moment, but he was curious. “Wh-- What?”

“Nothing, just. You’re, like. A fucking-- I mean, you just fucking woke up and you’re glowing.”

“Gluh-- What?”

“You’re like, gold-plated. And don’t let any assholes tell you that you always weren’t.” 

“Fuckable?” Jay said, trying not to take this too seriously.

“No, way-- Way fucking more than that, you’re. Like, do you even see yourself? Jesus christ, Jay. Sometimes I look at you and forget my fucking name.” 

Jay gave Mike a ‘yikes’ expression and again assumed he was still drunk. This was effective in the sense that Mike started fucking him real hard in response, and when Jay came, shouting Mike’s name, he presumed Mike got to see his face. Jay was too gone on how good it felt to get hammered like that before he was even properly awake to know if Mike was looking at him or not.

Mike came inside him soundlessly soon after that, burying his face against Jay’s shoulder and shuddering all over. He stayed inside Jay after he was done, and Jay thought of protesting, because it was a little bit excruciating to still have him lodged against all those sensitive places, post-orgasm. He didn’t say anything, though, just stroked Mike’s back and let him linger for a while.

“I guess you probably have things to do today,” Mike said, still inside him, his voice muffled against Jay’s skin. 

“It’s like six in the morning,” Jay said. “On a Saturday. I’m not doing shit. Are you hungover?”

“Yes.” 

“Okay, well. If you go to Pick n Save for me, I’ll make us something to eat. Hangover breakfast.”

“Sure,” Mike said, still not moving. 

Jay scratched at Mike’s hair, not sure what the problem was. Mike sighed and shifted inside him, soft now but still big enough to make Jay feel the slimy, come-slick ache of him with every adjustment he made to their weirdly prolonged positions.

“Is this gonna be a thing now?” Mike asked when he finally slid out of Jay, looking down into his face as he did. “Drunken booty calls?”

“I dunno,” Jay said, flushing. He didn’t like having this thrown in his face and wasn’t sure what Mike’s point was. “Sorry?”

Mike shrugged and got out of bed. He went into Jay’s bathroom and was in there for a while, running the sink. Jay got dressed, just in case they were about to fight. When Mike came out he looked sheepish.

“You don’t have to cook for me as, like, payment for services rendered,” Mike said, snatching his jeans off the floor. “I can get my own hangover breakfast.”

“Fine,” Jay said, sitting on the bed. He made his face as stoic as possible. “Didn’t really feel like doing it anyway.”

“Yeah, you were just trying to be nice, right? And getting me out of your bed as soon as possible, that’s just a bonus.” 

“You’re the shitheel who once left me in bed so he could order a fucking pizza.”

“The fuck’s wrong with that? I was going to come back! You’re so weird about food.”

“Oh, fuck off!”

“I’m trying!”

Jay sat there stunned and listened to Mike slam the door on his way out. He wanted to laugh but couldn’t force one out. It was fucking absurd, how easily they screwed up any goodwill between them when sex was involved, even while it was seemingly impossible for them to break apart in any other way. 

A couple of days later Mike came to Jay with the plan for him to marry a nasty old man for money. Jay could never tell how serious or not Mike was about these things, and as usual he decided to go along with it, deadpan, until Mike had no choice but to let Jay call his bluff.

It went on for a pretty long fucking time, in this case.

**

Calling Mike’s bluff took Jay all the way to a wedding altar in Vegas, but it was worth it for the way Mike showed up, breathless and humiliated by his half-cocked plan, flustered in his inability to even explain what the fuck he’d thought he’d been doing. He tried to turn it around on Jay, and then kind of did turn it around on him, when Jay used the whole fiasco as an excuse to throw a hail mary and told Mike outright, finally: I just want to do whatever you tell me to, no matter what.

Which lead to him being tied up and shaved in a motel room shortly before finally, finally getting to choke on Mike’s dick the way he’d been dreaming of for almost twenty years.

It seemed like the ultimate happy ending, but Jay had been fooled before. Even when they pulled over shortly after crossing the Wisconsin state line to fuck in the back of the rental car, he wasn’t sure they weren’t going to get back to their lives and find some way to tell each other to fuck off a fourth time. The motel room had felt like some kind of liminal space, and so had the rental car, the highway, the states they moved through in a post-coital blur. Once they returned the car at the Milwaukee airport and were back in Mike’s ancient Corolla, now driving toward home, Jay had no fucking clue what to expect.

Mike had gotten quiet. He kept touching Jay’s leg, which had felt reassuring at first but was starting to feel like some kind of weird act of desperation. For what, Jay wasn’t sure.

“Can I come up?” Mike asked, blurting this as he braked too hard in the parking lot of Jay’s apartment complex.

“Yeah,” Jay said, hope opening like a switchblade in his chest. Maybe Mike just needed to take a piss. It had been a while since their last pit stop.

Jay had left his apartment in a state. Empty beer bottles cluttered the kitchen counters and his little dining room table. He’d been drinking a lot, dreading this last chance pass at getting Mike to admit he felt something for him, if that was even what he’d done. He’d said, in the car, _like I could even live without you_. But Jay had already known that was true. He just wanted that necessary living with each other to include fucking more than every three years or so. Sharing a bed and all that corny shit would be great, too. 

“You need the bathroom or something?” Jay asked, pointing his thumb in that direction when Mike gave him a staredown. They were both near asleep on their feet after the long drive. 

“Put that down,” Mike said, meaning the mail Jay had been sifting through. “Drop it.” 

Jay did. Onto the floor. His heart started pounding. Oh, god, he wanted this. If it was what he thought he was getting. Wanted it so much.

“I’m gonna take a nap in your bed,” Mike said, his eyes going dark like he’d just said he was going to set fire to the place. “But, first.” He snapped his fingers, pointed at his feet. “Get over here. On your knees.”

Jay wasn’t sure he’d ever felt his cock fill so fast. It made him light-headed, and he was wobbly legged when he took a few steps toward Mike. He let his legs give out and walked the rest of the way on his knees, peering up at Mike with gratitude that was flooding him like a drumbeat, matching the rhythm of his heart.

“Good,” Mike said, staring down at him, eyes hooded. He touched Jay’s face, unzipping his jeans with his other hand. “Kinda wound up after that drive, ya know. Gonna use your mouth now.”

“Yes,” Jay said, gushing this out without thinking. He flushed and wanted Mike to, like, slap his cheek for speaking out of turn, or something.

“God, you’re already hard,” Mike said, grinning when he noticed the tent in Jay’s jeans. “That’s sweet. Here you go, here’s what you need.” 

Jay put his hands behind his back without thinking and sort of dove forward to take Mike’s cock in his mouth. Mike was still softish but got hard fast between his lips, and Jay moaned for the feeling, which was brand new for him. He drooled around Mike’s dick and floated in pure satisfaction as Mike got thicker and thicker on his tongue, in his mouth.

“Good,” Mike said, and his voice was thicker, too. He stroked Jay’s cheek with his thumb and sighed with contentment that Jay wanted to swallow. “Aw, you’re blushing,” Mike said, smirking down at Jay when he glanced up to meet his eyes, his fingers soft on Jay’s cheek. 

Jay grunted around Mike’s dick and closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure where the blush came from. It wasn’t like he was ashamed, not now. Though maybe feeling like a slut who was ready to get on his knees at the snap of Mike’s fingers was part of what he liked about this. Well, definitely it was. He didn’t care where it came from or how desperate Mike would see him get-- Way more, he imagined, starting from here. He’d been worried that they’d mumble some awkward bullshit and not even fuck again for a year. The fact that Mike was ready to pick up right where they’d left off in the motel was more than he’d dared to hope for on their walk up to his second floor unit.

Mike started fucking his mouth a little, then a lot. Jay twisted his hands together behind his back and did his best to take it, only coughing a little. He felt Mike pulse on his tongue and blinked up at him while he swallowed the first heavy spurt of his come, wanting to see Mike’s face. Mike looked desperate and sweet, and when their eyes met Jay felt that thing in him get knocked over for the millionth time. This time he thought: fuck it. That thing is never going back up.

“Okay, good, yeah,” Mike said, swaying on his feet while Jay licked his lips and peered up at him, waiting for his next command. “Now, um. Go get in the bed, lie down. Gonna give you your reward.”

Jay snickered a little at that terminology as he stood. Mike swatted him on the ass and winked at him, followed him to the bedroom.

The reward was a blow job, and Jay didn’t mind Mike’s inability to be creative after all that driving and drama. He held Mike’s head down and fucked into his mouth, came way too fast. They kissed for a while after, peeled off their shirts and jeans and collapsed together at the center of Jay’s bed, exhausted.

“Learned my lesson, Jay,” Mike said, mumbling this into Jay’s hair when he was half asleep.

“Hmm? Lesson?”

“You-- You’re mine, so. You’re in my thrall, like, under that spell, um. So I gotta take care of you. See to your needs and shit.”

Jay snorted. His face was pressed to Mike’s throat. He couldn’t stop smiling.

“That’s right, Mike,” he said, patting his back. “Thanks.”

Mike laughed at Jay thanking him for this. Jay pinched his back fat in revenge. Mike pushed his fingers into Jay’s mouth, told him to keep them there, and they fell asleep like that. They slept for most of the day, missing their shift at the repair shop. In most jobs this would be a fireable offense, but someone seemed to be looking out for them ever since the start, and though everything else about their lives changed from then forward, for the better, the shitty job blessedly remained there for them just like it always had, only now with more pantsless interludes in the back room.

**


End file.
